Duck Breast with Morello Cherries and Roasted Baby Potatoes

Serves 4 to 5
4 x 350g duck breasts from fattened ducks
500g baby potatoes
25g salted butter
3 shallots, chopped
2 garlic cloves, crushed
15 sprigs flat-leaf parsley, chopped
50g pitted morello cherries
Pinch caster or granulated sugar

Preparation

 Peel the potatoes and cook them in a pan with the salted butter. When they are half-cooked, add the chopped shallots and crushed garlic to the pan. Scatter with the chopped parsley just before serving.

 While the potatoes are cooking, first cook the duck breast with the fat side down in a non-stick pan without adding any additional fat. Cook for seven to eight minutes. Pour any fat that has dripped off into a bowl. Turn the breasts over and cook for another three minutes. Leave them to rest on a plate.

 Take the cherries and toss them in the pan with a pinch of sugar. Leave them to colour for two minutes, until the juice is a little syrupy.

 To plate, place a nice crisp duck breast on each plate with the potatoes on one side and a line of cherry juice on the other. Top the breast with a few cherries.

 Chill the duck fat from the pan and reserve it for the next time you sauté potatoes (without parboiling them).

A dash of advice

Magret de canard, duck breast from ducks fattened for their foie gras, is a strong flavoured red meat. It is produced in the south-west of France and  deserves to be paired with a wine from this region. Côtes de Blaye winemaker Dominique Léandre-Chevalier’s Le Queyroux strikes me as just perfect. The meat used here is from mallard ducks. The market for foie gras has exploded, and the demand for the meat has followed suit: it has the qualities of red meat but is nevertheless poultry.

Originally published in FrenchEntrée magazine